Daughter of Nothing

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  He smacked the steel grate with his cane, producing a reverberant crack from the depths of the hole. “How many days should you spend in there? I think I’ll let you wonder. Sensei, put him in.”

  Sensei produced a big, black key from his pocket. He unlocked the massive padlock that held the grate closed, then ordered Kirk and Elias to help him heave the grate up. They tipped it back on its hinges, and it fell with a loud bang on the hard turf.

  Every Scion stepped back a pace, some covering their mouths with their hands.

  Jacey had looked into the pit hundreds of times during her years at the Scion School. A narrow, rusty, iron ladder descended ten meters into a round, abandoned well two meters across. It had been partially filled in, but the bottom few feet were always covered with stagnant water.

  Aside from the ladder, there wasn’t a ledge or outcropping of rock to rest upon, no way to keep dry. She shivered at the thought of spending even one minute in it, let alone an entire night.

  Humphrey schooled his face to passivity, and without any urging or direction from Sensei, climbed into the pit. Sensei and the boys lifted the grate up and slammed it shut.

  Face grim, Sensei slid the lock into place, and it snicked shut. He pocketed the key and walked away, disappearing into the dojo.

  “No one shall speak to Humphrey or give him food unless at my direction. Not Sensei’s direction. Not Nurse Smith’s direction.” He patted his chest with the flat of his hand. “My direction, spoken in person. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Dr. Carlhagen,” they said in quiet, respectful voices.

  He wasn’t satisfied, for he demanded it again. “Is that understood?”

  They replied again. Louder. “Yes, Dr. Carlhagen.”

  “If you think Humphrey’s punishment is severe, know that if you defy me in this, yours will be double.”

  With that, he limped off toward the medical ward. Jacey had half a mind to chase after him and knock him down, beat him with his own cane.

  It wouldn’t be difficult. Even if Sensei tried to defend him, there were too many of them if they joined together.

  Only, with the exception of Wanda, Livy, and maybe Elias, none of them wanted to talk to her, much less follow her in some sort of mutiny.

  The word hung in her mind.

  Mutiny. She’d read Mutiny on the Bounty a few years earlier, but she had never equated Dr. Carlhagen with Captain Bligh until that very moment.

  Wanda tugged on her arm. “We have to get back to class. But promise me you’ll tell me everything about last night later.”

  “I promise. I’ll tell you everything tonight.”

  When Jacey started toward Girls’ Hall, Wanda asked why she wasn’t headed to class.

  Jacey shrugged. “What’s the point?”

  Not knowing how to respond, Wanda asked whether she should take the head girl position in the classroom, the desk facing back toward the Scions and her Nine.

  “Go ahead. Pay special attention to Livy.”

  Jacey went into Girls’ Hall, considered lying down and sleeping, but felt a sudden and urgent need to shower.

  Turning the water as hot as she could bear, she scrubbed her skin, welcoming the sting of the soap in her thornskipple wounds.

  The hot water made her sleepy, and a relentless thirst overtook her. She put her uniform back on, drank copious amounts of water, and climbed into her bunk, intending to sleep forever. But no sooner had she flopped down than her reader chimed. It was Socrates.

  “Instead of lounging for the rest of your day,” he said, “why don’t you go to Madam LaFontaine’s and do your recitation assignment?”

  “Not now, Socrates. I don’t feel well.”

  “Child,” he said, “you have so many questions, and yet you refuse to listen to the answers.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  But Socrates’s image had faded from her reader.

  You won’t listen to the answers . . .

  She hopped down from her bunk and headed for the dance studio.

  19

  The Good Stuff

  Dr. Carlhagen leaned on his cane and yawned as he waited for Nurse Smith to open the steel door behind her desk. Though she was only fifty-five, the old woman didn’t know the meaning of speed.

  Dr. Carlhagen yawned again. The disastrous dinner the night before had taken a toll on him. He’d awakened to a muddled memory of the whole affair. He had to admit that the pills were becoming a problem.

  And now he felt so sleepy, so completely used up, he considered calling for Mr. Justin to bring the truck down from the hacienda to pick him up.

  “He kept trying to get up this morning,” Nurse Smith said, as she guided him to Vaughan’s bedside. “I had to put him on the same drip as Janicka.”

  Vaughan lay with his mouth open, glassy eyes staring at nothing.

  “The ribs and skull are nearly healed,” Nurse Smith said. “Miraculous and unnatural, if you ask me.”

  Of all the nurses in the world, Dr. Carlhagen had unwittingly chosen the most superstitious. “Their resilience is wholly due to slight tweaks made to their DNA. It is as natural as your hair.”

  That caused Nurse Smith to gasp and pat her coal-black bun. Apparently her hair color was anything but natural. “They are abominations, Doctor. I know you think you’re doing good, but the devil’s plans can easily hatch in the hearts of well-intentioned men.”

  “I have no time for one of your sermons right now, Nurse. Go fetch me a bottle of ibuprofen.”

  The woman had seemed so clear-minded in the interview. Next time he’d run a battery of psychological tests on a candidate before hiring them. Bah! How he hated administrative work.

  “But the boy feels no pain in this state,” Nurse Smith said. “And he can’t even swallow pudding, let alone pills.”

  “The ibuprofen is not for him!” Dr. Carlhagen snapped.

  Nurse Smith squawked, but she got moving.

  Vaughan’s vitals looked good. The low brain activity and pulse were due to the drip. Dr. Carlhagen envied the boy his vegetative state. He’d skipped his andleprixen that morning, and his joints were screaming. Especially his left hip.

  Nurse Smith returned with a bottle of ibuprofen. Dr. Carlhagen shook out four pills and popped them in his mouth. He doubted they would do much good, but any relief would be welcome.

  He put the bottle in his coat pocket. “Mr. Justin is preparing a room in the hacienda for Vaughan. I’ll have him moved soon.”

  “And if we have an emergency before then?”

  “Call me, but let no one into the ward. And continue to say nothing of his condition.”

  Dr. Carlhagen needed the Scions to fear the worst about Vaughan’s state, needed to prepare them for the differences in Vaughan’s behavior when he rejoined them.

  “What about the client?” Nurse Smith asked.

  “I can’t worry about her right now.” He’d have to address the whole Janicka problem soon. She needed to be brought up from her drugged stupor at intervals so that he could work with her. He had no doubt he could guide her through integration, though the new entity would necessarily be a blend of Janicka and Sarah.

  It was just that the pain he had to deal with was too great to be able to concentrate. As it was, he’d have to spend the rest of the day in bed. Already he was feeling shaky and nauseated, sure signs of physical withdrawal from the andleprixen.

  He tottered out of the medical ward and began the torturous climb to the hacienda. He dug in his pocket for the bottle of andleprixen several times, only to come up with the ibuprofen. He’d left the good stuff at the hacienda for that very reason.

  Stopping halfway up the path to take a breather, he turned to look back over the campus he’d built. The dark square of the pit grating caught his eye, reminding him of Humphrey’s stupidity.

  He should have ignored the whole issue with the radio. Putting Humphrey in the pit had been rash. Teaching a lesson was one thing, but risking the health of a Sc
ion so close to transfer was another.

  Not good. It had to be the pills.

  But Humphrey had angered him. The boy was such a gross disappointment, perhaps the biggest failure of the whole program. Even so, it had to be better being a disappointing seventeen-year-old than a pain-wracked ninety-three year old. Dr. Carlhagen chuckled humorlessly at the thought.

  He continued up the path painful step by painful step. He’d have to take one pill when he got there just to take the edge off. That was actually a very sensible plan, he thought. Going cold turkey could be dangerous. Best to wean himself off the pills slowly.

  Yes. I’ll have just one.

  20

  Greeted with Tears

  Jacey crossed the worn wooden planks to the center of the dance studio and regarded herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Socrates’s parting remarks that she wasn’t listening to the answers to her questions intrigued her. He had to be referring to the lines she was about to recite.

  She closed her eyes and calmed herself to find the thread of syllables she had memorized.

  “‘Why do you look on us and shake your head and call us wretches, orphans, castaways, if that our noble father be alive?’

  “‘Fathered he is, and yet he is fatherless.’

  “‘He was skillful enough to have lived still if knowledge could be set up against mortality.’

  “‘Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere Scion of the evil principal and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and Godlike.’”

  That was all of it. The lines were clearly not from the same work, or if they were, not in sequence.

  She didn’t see how she would be able to act them out since they had no context. Still, she went through them again, stopping on a quote she recognized was from Macbeth. “Fathered he is, yet he is fatherless.”

  Like all of us Scions.

  But it didn’t tell her anything new.

  Still puzzling, she said it again. “‘Fathered he is, and yet he is fatherless.’”

  Madam LaFontaine appeared in the mirror. “What is this, Jacey? Why do you insist on disturbing me with your gibberish?”

  “I’m sorry, Madam,” Jacey said. “Socrates sent me here to recite these lines. He said it would help my elocution.”

  “Nonsense,” Madam LaFontaine said. “Is this what passes as education among Socrates’s students?”

  “I am also memorizing the entirety of Macbeth. Would you like me to recite it?”

  “No, no, no,” Madam LaFontaine said, arms flailing. “I don’t want to hear you talking at all. If you are going to be in my dance studio, then you might as well dance. All of this recitation is just wasting time, as talking usually is. Action is what is needed, and so you shall move!”

  Jacey had to agree. The quotes in themselves didn’t mean anything, and with Madam LaFontaine standing there tapping her foot and glowering, Jacey decided to go ahead and put on her leotard and pointe shoes.

  After a brief warm-up, Madam LaFontaine had her do a sequence of spins and leaps, each time suggesting minor adjustments to Jacey’s head position or hands.

  “This can count as your tryout for Swan Lake,” Madam LaFontaine said at the end of the impromptu workout as Jacey started to change into her uniform. “Not that anyone else has a shot for prima ballerina anyway.”

  Jacey paused in the act of buttoning up her uniform top. “If you have already made up your mind, why go through the process of tryouts?”

  “I’ll run my class the way I see fit,” the dance mistress said. She gave a sniff. “Besides, Dr. Carlhagen chose Swan Lake with you in mind.”

  Of course he had.

  She shuddered as her thoughts flashed back to the dinner and how Dr. Carlhagen had manhandled her in front of Humphrey.

  By the time Jacey had finished dressing and stowed her gear, Madam LaFontaine had vanished from the mirror. Jacey stepped close to it to study her reflection. Dr. Carlhagen kept telling her how pretty she was. She had no idea whether it was true or not. As far as she could tell, all of the girls were pretty, just as all the boys were handsome in their way—though some repelled her with their personalities.

  But why had Dr. Carlhagen singled her out? Why wasn’t he giving all of this attention to Belle?

  It always came back to the same thing. Her future was linked to Humphrey’s. But if Humphrey was equally special, it didn’t make sense that Dr. Carlhagen had abused him so terribly.

  The noon bell rang. It was lunchtime, and Jacey was starving. But she dreaded going to the dining hall, because with Vaughan gone and Humphrey in the pit, she would be alone at the table with Belle.

  She decided to wait in the quad and only went into the dining hall after Belle left. After lunch, she was overcome with fatigue and decided to take a nap while the other students went back for their afternoon session with Socrates.

  She woke up with Wanda shaking her. She could tell by the angle of the sun through the window that she had slept longer than she had planned. “What time is it?”

  “Sixth bell just rang. I brought you a bun.” The girl handed Jacey a standard-issue bun from the kitchens. Jacey took a bite and found she was starving again and quickly consumed the whole thing.

  “You promised to tell us what happened at the hacienda,” Wanda said.

  Jacey noticed that the rest of her Nine was staring at her, some awkwardly leaning from their bunks to peer at her. Across the aisle, most of Belle’s Nine were doing the same. Jacey climbed down from her bunk and brushed the breadcrumbs from her uniform.

  She took position at the head of the aisle and lifted her voice. “After the Birthday ceremony and the Graduates headed to the medical ward, Vaughan asked me to come with him to the bell tower.”

  “Why would we believe you?” Belle asked with a sneer.

  Jacey ignored her. “Humphrey knew something was going on and followed us. Vaughan didn’t want him to risk getting in trouble, so I tried to convince him to go to the dining hall. But Humphrey knew that Vaughan was up to something and was intent on going with me to meet him.”

  She continued on about Dante being wired to broadcast everything that happened in the medical ward and Vaughan having the walkie-talkie.

  “Humphrey had the walkie-talkie, you fool,” Belle said, stepping close to Jacey. “That’s why he’s in the pit right now.”

  Jacey refused to be intimidated. The pale girl didn’t have her thugs or a thornskipple branch to back her up. “Once Vaughan and I were caught coming from the bell tower, Humphrey and I knew we couldn’t share what we had learned because it would lead Sensei and Dr. Carlhagen back to Vaughan—and him possessing the stolen walkie-talkie. We didn’t want him to get in more trouble than he was already in. But now that Humphrey has taken the blame for it, there is no reason not to tell you everything.”

  “Humphrey’s so brave,” Summer said, blinking away tears. “And now he’s down in that pit, struggling moment by moment to survive. Is there anyone more—”

  Everyone, including Belle, shouted the love-struck girl to silence.

  “So what did you hear?” Wanda asked, leaning forward with an eager gleam in her eyes.

  The girls of Jacey’s Nine crowded closer, as did several from Belle’s. For the third time, Jacey recited the conversation she’d heard through the walkie-talkie. When she opened her eyes at the end, she was greeted with tears. But not her own.

  There were tears on Wanda’s face, on Bethancy’s face. On every girl’s face except for Belle’s.

  “You lie,” Belle said. “Our parents are dead.”

  Wanda sat on her bunk, hands tightly clasped. “My mother. I wonder what she’s like.”

  They all started to murmur and talk at the same time. The younger ones hugged each other.

  “But what about our fathers?” Wanda asked.

  Jacey shook her head.

  The conversation among the Scions didn’t end for several
more hours, but eventually they settled into their beds.

  Wanda’s face peeped over Jacey’s bunk. “You didn’t tell me about the dress. Where is it?”

  The only good thing about revealing Dante’s conversation was that she had avoided speaking about what had happened at the hacienda. She wasn’t about to get into it now. “I left it at the hacienda,” Jacey said. “I don’t ever want to see it again. Now go to sleep.”

  Having slept most of the afternoon, Jacey lay awake for a long time. At one point, she got up to use the bathroom. When she returned to her bunk, she noticed Belle sitting up.

  The pale girl didn’t say anything, and in the dim light, Jacey couldn’t see her expression. But after Jacey crawled into bed, she was sure she heard sobs coming from across the aisle.

  21

  I'm Dr. Carlhagen's

  At class the next day, Socrates greeted Jacey and asked her how her recitation had gone the day before.

  She explained how Madam LaFontaine had interrupted it and made her dance instead. “You know, Socrates, you led me to believe there were answers in what I had memorized, but it was all disconnected quotes from Shakespeare and other things.”

  “How hard did you think about them?”

  Jacey had to admit she hadn’t really given it much consideration at all. She had been too busy, first with Madam LaFontaine’s interruption and then dealing with her Nine and their questions.

  “Go back and try it again.”

  Jacey left the classroom and wandered into the quad, not really seeing the point of hurrying back to the dance studio. She knew Madam LaFontaine would just interrupt her again and make her dance more.

  She went to the pit.

  “Humphrey?” Her voice echoed back up to her. She heard a splash of water, and a foul sewage stench rose, making her back away in search of clean air.